Tag Archives: LCRC

One more problematic image: The case of Ting-Yi Oei

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With all the focus on images lately – from witlessly offensive to intentionally menacing to so hilariously unexamined that the possibility of sabotage has been raised – it’s no wonder that Governor McDonnell didn’t stay longer for a photo op with Loudoun Republicans.

There’s another image for voters to keep in mind. It’s an image that a man had cause to upload to his phone one day in the course of doing his job – and he paid dearly for it, due to an inexplicable series of actions taken by Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Plowman.

TOLD THAT a judge was dismissing all charges against him, Virginia educator Ting-Yi Oei had just one thought: “Hallelujah.” Given his nightmarish prosecution on child pornography charges, it was an understandable, even restrained, reaction. What’s not understandable is why criminal charges were ever brought against an unassuming assistant high school principal who was just trying to do his job. Loudoun County residents are right to wonder about the unsettling circumstances of this case and to demand better answers.

–A Nightmare in Loudoun; Why was a respected educator subjected to baseless child pornography charges? Washington Post, April 30, 2009.

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Unfit for office, unfit for endorsement

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I could never, had I been asked to imagine the most ridiculous and easily verifiable lie that Eugene Delgaudio might invent, have imagined something as ridiculous and easily verifiable as this:

When contacted by the Loudoun Times-Mirror for comment about the exposure of his “Blood Door” email, Mr. Delgaudio told the reporter that the Photoshopped image he had sent to his mailing list was the original and that his image had actually been Photoshopped, by the very people who caught him in this behavior, to make it “look like blood.”

Side by side image comparison by the Loudoun Times-Mirror

When the reporter told me this, I said I thought that was interesting, and suggested that she search on Google images for “blood door.” She did.

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Recoil

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Zombie Obama. 

Whether a mean-spirited attack on our president or a light-hearted attempt at Halloween humor (the former being the more likely), the whole situation is a train wreck. 

But there is something to be pulled out: that is the overwhelming response of condemnation and disgust from all political parties.  Looking through the comments, it’s possible to see that even self-identified republicans are indignant.  This is not what the Republican Party stands for.  This is not what any party should stand for.  This is way across the line.

And there are repercussions.  Governor McDonnell has announced that he will not attend a Get Out The Vote rally for the Loudoun County republicans scheduled for this Thursday.  The communications chair of the LCRC responsible for this e-mail blast has left his position.  There is a general movement throughout the party to distance itself from this radical position that so many Republicans resent as taking a whole spectrum of sociopolitical identities and lumping them into a single extremist position.  And until now, there has been no intra-party pushback.  I’ve said it before that we are not aware of social boundaries until we bump blithely into them.   And it looks like we’ve finally reached that limit and are recoiling.

Let’s hope the LCRC leadership is doing the same, and that this is not a façade or attempt at damage control.  Let’s hope we can see some real leadership. 

And Mr. Sell: sometimes this means stepping down to do what’s best for your party.

An unfortunate omission

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I was very impressed with the airy above-it-all tone Joe was able to summon about “the recent Halloween unpleasantness” until I saw his images, images that were apparently the point of the post.

The thing is, there’s nothing new there. We already know that there are people on the outer fringes of good judgment and civility, enough of whom might actually be dangerous that we need a Secret Service whether our president is a Democrat or a Republican. What I fear is that this post is a – I hate to say it – deliberate attempt to pretend that the images at issue in Loudoun did not come from an official Republican Party Committee and a Republican elected official, and hope that no one notices. I’m sorry, but someone did.

From the official Republican Party Committee

From the Republican elected official

A Trend Of Intolerance

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We are now eight days from Election Day, and the masks are coming off. The true face of the Loudoun Republican Party and it’s candidates is being shown, and it’s not pretty. In fact, it’s downright violent.

Disagree? Then explain the images that Loudoun’s Republican establishment have been circulating to “drum up” support in these waning days.

Item One:


And Item Two:

It really is as simple as the pictures above. There is an organization in Loudoun County whose leaders and candidates believe that images condoning violence towards elected leaders and entire segments of the population is an acceptable, even funny, way to make their case to the voters. And there is an organization whose leaders and candidates believe that true leadership is about uniting, not dividing, our Loudoun Community.

On November 8th, vote Democratic. At some point, we must no longer be silent. We must no longer tolerate hate, bigotry and casual dehumanization as an “odd quirk” of our political establishment. Staying home simply empowers those who spread hate. On November 8, stand up and be among those who say “No more! Loudoun County will no longer be home to this hate!”

Does Geary Higgins wish that his volunteers would just go away?

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The Higgins team is still hard at it, arguing that they should be allowed to go door to door and demand that anyone with a Baldwin yard sign hand over their Chapman signs. Consistent with his out-of-touch letter (I wonder if he cleared that with Geary first), David LaRock is out busily winning friends and influencing people. Not:

Thanks for letting me know there is disagreement with me suggesting Mike Chapman give some thought to separating his signs from Baldwin’s on the main drag in Hamilton, in Baldwin’s front yard or elsewhere where hundreds of people see them every day…

…As we all know, anyone who is part of the Republican team, needs to remember, that allows them to draw from the team and requires they give back to the team. Think about what would happen if Mike or someone speaking on his behalf, knocked on those 5-6 doors to say please don’t use my sign with Baldwin’s. Worst case for Mike is he could lose 5-6 votes… or maybe some of those 5-6 people would stick with Mike because he is a team player, net result for Mike in either case is very small… [emphasis mine]

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Rick Perry’s ties to PHC

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An interesting article in the August 27, Huffington Post describes the relationship between Rick Perry and “conservative Christian” businessman and financier Dr. James Leininger.  The entire article is worth a read.  I’ll quote the section on Leininger’s largess to Patrick Henry College.  Readers may also want to note that Dimitri Kesari, Eugene Delgaudio, and his former aide Donny Furgeson all have Texas ties, as does Prison Fellowship Ministries.  The head of the Texas State Board of Education is a PFM “Centurion” (an activist who has completed a program of ideological training to implement the PFM/Chuck Colson “worldview”).

Leininger has also bankrolled a number of anti-abortion groups, including Texas Right to Life, Heidi Group and the Christian Pro Life Foundation. His charity, The Covenant Foundation, Inc., contributed at least $450,000 from 1997 to 2005 to the Medical Institute for Sexual Health, an abstinence-only advocate. In 2005, he gave $100,000 in support of an amendment banning gay marriage.

The Covenant Foundation, Inc., charity has also been another way for Leininger to project his money into Christian conservative causes. The biggest benefactor of the charity’s largesse in the past few years has been the conservative Patrick Henry College, which received $9.3 million in contributions from 2008 to 2009. Leininger sits on the Board of Trustees of the school.

Post-primary postmodernism

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Wherein a few loose ends are explored.
(Updated to clarify meaning of terms.)

1. The GOP has a bigotry problem. Those who are genuinely trying to combat it have my sympathy, if not my confidence. A commenter at TC who goes by Muslim Conservative has been patiently doing a lot of heavy lifting in that regard, and has managed to dislodge some damaging admissions, to wit: Former Republican candidate for Sheriff Greg Ahlemann has stated once again that he categorically does not “vote for or support candidates who support or practice Islam.” He also stated that he would never vote for or support “a homosexual.”

That statement might surprise those who read my interview with him on Equality Loudoun back in 2007, in which he talked about Muslim friends and gay friends in a way clearly intended to dispel the rumor that he harbors bigotry. What might also surprise you is that his views haven’t changed since then, and that he doesn’t see any contradiction. He genuinely believes, I think, that these statements do not constitute bigotry, and he is not alone in this view.

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You know, out of touch.

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Leesburg Patch has a great article up about former Supervisor, and LCRC candidate for Board of Supervisors Chair, Steve Stockman. It illustrates Mr. Stockman’s status as a candidate with little connection with the reality lived by people here in Loudoun County, as well as his limitations as a candidate.

Steve Stockman’s only care seems to be a single issue, “taxes,” with little or no comprehension of the myriad things that drive that issue. For example, the incredible growth in the school population since he last served on the Board has a huge, and largely unavoidable, impact on the revenue necessary to run the LCPS, the largest single driver of the county tax rate. Mr. Stockman’s position seems to be that we can set a low tax rate and let all the necessary services simply wither to accommodate that rate. Of course, recent court cases have demonstrated that to be a fundamentally flawed assumption. In California, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the state to release inmates since Gov. Schwarzenegger and his allies decided to grossly underfund their prison system. In New Jersey, the State Supreme Court ordered Gov. Christie to fund underperforming schools, over the efforts of the Gov. and his allies to let school spending wither. Mr. Stockman’s “cut and wither” policy proposals do not lead to lower taxes, they lead to lawsuits. And didn’t we have enough of those under the last Board?

But perhaps nothing illustrates Mr. Stockman’s inability to comprehend the realities of living in the County he seeks to lead like this quote:

Some issues of great concern to some candidates are of little concern to Stockman, such as transportation, which he considers “not that big” of an issue because people choose where to live.

“You can make improvements around the margins, but people will decide to live and commute based on their own individual choices,” he said. “You know, commuting, it’s all voluntary.” – Leesburg Patch

Or this quote, detailing his opposition to Metro to Dulles.

While the current board of supervisors has signaled concerns about the Metro project – primarily that if the Washington Metropolitan Airports Authority wants a more costly underground station, it should find the money without tolls or local tax dollars – Stockman is cool to the idea for other reasons.

“I’m not too enthusiastic,” he said. “I know we want it to [Dulles] airport and a lot of people think it’s going to be a godsend. I don’t think it is. I think that American people prefer to have private transportation. Mostly, right now, Metro’s running at a deficit. “

Now, I know Mr. Stockman owns his own company, and therefore hasn’t had to find a decent paying job and a place to live recently. And as the article points out, his kids have long since moved out, so he doesn’t have to worry about ferrying them to events, or taking schools into account along with commute, home prices, cost of living, and other factors when looking for somewhere to live. So maybe, in that context, he could be forgiven his appalling ignorance of the impact of long commutes on Loudoun families (not to mention our environment and the attendant traffic externalities that impact the quality of life for everyone in Loudoun).

But in the context of being a candidate to Chair the Board of Supervisors? In that context, the ignorance and lack of concern for one of the most important realities for all of us in Loudoun – commuting – is enough to disqualify him as a serious candidate for office.

Or, rather, it should disqualify him. Whether it does is up to the LCRC.

The 10th Delegate Race

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It wasn’t that long ago that there was a race for Delegate shaping up between incumbent Republican senior citizen Joe May and the young Leesburg Town Council member, Dave Butler. Dave made his intentions to run for Delegate known before the Redistricting fight in Richmond was over. So, it came as a surprise to no one that Joe May conveniently redistricted his opponent out of his District. And yes, the map in this area was Del. May’s doing. As a senior member of the House of Delegates, with incumbency since 1994 (and a perspective rooted in 1994, as well), it was his hand drawing the lines.

Dave Butler is a candidate that one of the most senior, and historically electorally safe, Republicans in the Assembly, did not want to run against.

After the new lines were drawn, Councilmember Butler started visiting with the voters in the new 10th District. From the Winchester Airport, to Boyce in Clarke, to Middleburg, Leesburg and Goose Creek, he has been walking through neighborhoods, talking to Virginians, and listening to the concerns of constituents who do not feel they’re getting their fair share from Richmond.
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